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I confronted the ABC about their humiliating defamation loss to Heston Russell and the culture at the ABC. A federal court judge found that the unreasonable actions of ABC journalists led to protracted litigation.

Australian taxpayers are getting a multi-million bill because the ABC got it wrong and couldn’t bring themselves to apologise. Their entire culture needs an overhaul. Will the journalist responsible for publishing

disinformation, failing to act reasonably and costing the taxpayer millions about an elite veteran be punished at all? Apparently not.

The government’s response to news of shady foreign money potentially influencing the RMIT-ABC Fact Check partnership is silence.

The credibility of ‘independent fact checkers’ has been destroyed. It’s time for the government to abandon its ACMA Misinformation and Disinformation Bill, which relies on fact checkers being the arbiters of truth.

Update: ABC has ended its partnership with RMIT Exclusive: ABC ends seven-year partnership with RMIT Fact Check (crikey.com.au)

Transcript

I rise to take note of the answers the government gave today in relation to foreign influence of the RMIT-ABC Fact Check partnership. As anybody who has been put in Facebook jail knows, the credibility of fact-checkers is in shambles. The fact-checkers are meant to be independent yet they are not. Who fact-checks the fact checkers? Facebook has recently suspended its partnership with RMIT FactLab after media reports revealed the director, former ABC journalist Russell Skelton, is openly campaigning for a yes vote in the upcoming referendum while his organisation dishes out fact checks on the no campaign—hardly impartial, completely conflicted. Then there is the potential foreign influence on the fact-check partnership.

Here are some facts Minister Watt sought and ought to know. Financial statements from the International Fact-Checking Network, the IFCN, show a foreign organisation gave grants to the RMIT-ABC partnership. The IFCN’s funders are a combination of shady private foundations, foreign-headquartered technology giant Meta and even the United States government via its embassy in Bangkok. Why is the taxpayer funded national broadcaster, the ABC, seemingly receiving funds from potential agents of foreign influence for its fact checks? What sort of influence on fact checks do foreign agents buy with this money? These are all frightening questions about how far the influence of this shady, rapidly growing censorship industry reaches.

Fact-checking is being used in a censorship campaign to shut down dissent. During COVID, fact checkers in the Department of Health and Ageing told social media to take down a meme about masks being useless. That was always true. The gold standard Cochrane review confirmed masks are useless. The fact checkers’ outrageous behaviour demonstrates that the government’s misinformation and disinformation bill should be dead in the water. It’s time for the government to admit defeat and abandon their Orwellian censorship power grab. The key to human progress is freedom. Human progress starts with freedom of thought and freedom of sharing thoughts. Freedom of speech is fundamental to human progress.

Related:

Financial statements show an ABC fact check partnership with RMIT received grants from an organisation that receives funds from George Soros funded foreign organisations, foreign governments and shadowy foundations.

Instead of taking these issues seriously, Minister Watt treats the questions with contempt, rabbiting on with meaningless waffle.

If the ABC has been co-opted into “fact checks” that have been influenced by shady foreign money, then Australians deserve to know.

Follow up to these questions here.

Update: ABC has ended its partnership with RMIT Exclusive: ABC ends seven-year partnership with RMIT Fact Check (crikey.com.au)

Transcript

Senator Roberts: My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Communications, Senator Watt. Why is the ABC receiving funds from potential agents of foreign influence for its fact-checking partnership with RMIT?

Senator Watt: I am not actually aware of the suggestions that Senator Roberts is making. I’m a little wary about taking them at face value, because I know Senator Roberts has a certain view of the ABC that is not a view I share. And I’m not sure Senator Roberts has always accurately represented the situation when it comes to the ABC. I would invite Senator Roberts to present further evidence of that, if he has that evidence available.

What I will say is that this government is a very strong supporter of the ABC. We recognise that it has a very important role as the national broadcaster. It has an important role not just in our big capital cities but also, particularly, in regional parts of Australia. It is often the only way of having local, regional stories told at the national level, and that’s why we are supportive of the ABC. It also plays a very important role during natural disasters as a sort of critical information for people seeking to stay alive during emergencies. They are some of the reasons that we support the ABC, and they are some of the reasons why we were so concerned by the budget cuts that were imposed by the then coalition government on the ABC, because those cuts removed or reduced the ability of the ABC to broadcast those regional stories in some of those areas that Senator Roberts and Senator Hanson like to say they care about. Those cuts reduced the ABC’s ability to provide some of that emergency information that is so vital to rural and regional communities. So we’re very proud of the fact that we’re strong supporters of the ABC. We don’t join in the regular attacks that we see on the ABC from the conservative side of politics, because we think that the institution plays a very important role in our national democracy. We will always remain strong supporters of the ABC.

The President: Senator Roberts, first supplementary?

Senator Roberts: The International Fact-Checking Network’s financial statements show that that foreign organisations gave the RMIT-ABC Fact Check partnership multiple grants. The International Fact-Checking Network receives funds from the US government, a private Norwegian foundation, foreign headquartered tech giant Meta, and a handful of private, shady organisations and foundations. Why didn’t the ABC declare that it was receiving funding from private, foreign organisations and governments for its RMIT fact-checking partnership?

Senator Carol Brown interjecting—

Senator Watt: That’s a fair point, Senator Brown. If there were a fact checker for some of the things that come out of One Nation, they’d be very, very busy. As for Senator Canavan, you wouldn’t even start trying to check facts from Senator Canavan. You’d want to have more than a decade if you wanted to check facts from Senator Canavan.

As I say, I’m very wary of entering into propositions that are being put by Senator Roberts when it comes to foreign interference and foreign influence. He is prone to saying various things about those issues, which don’t always bear fact checking themselves. Again, Senator Roberts, I’d invite you to provide any hard evidence that you have to support the claims that you’re making, but I repeat my position that we are strong supporters of the ABC. In fact, I think the public regard the ABC as the most trustworthy news agency in the country. That is regularly shown in surveys. (Time expired)

The President: Senator Roberts, second supplementary?

The government’s Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill does not define the terms ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’ in specifics. It would likely be left to biased and foreign influenced fact checkers. Facebook has suspended RMIT FactLab services after accusations of bias in fact-checking the Voice referendum and reports of lapsed accreditation. Minister, will the government abandon its Orwellian misinformation and disinformation bill given that the fact checker’s credibility has been destroyed?

Senator Watt: Senator Roberts, thank you for the question. I know that you and a number of members of the Liberal and National parties have a strong position, you say, in relation to matters of misinformation—

The President: Senator Watt, I remind you to direct your comments through the chair.

Senator Watt: Okay. I know that there are many senators from the Liberal, National and One Nation parties who say all sorts of things about misinformation. It doesn’t seem to prevent them from presenting all sorts of misinformation about certain referendums that we’re about to have in this country. It doesn’t seem to prevent them joining in on misinformation and disinformation campaigns telling people that we’re going to be facing parking tickets being legislated by the Voice and all sorts of nonsense like that. If you want to have a discussion about misinformation, I’d suggest that you keep your own house in order and come to this parliament in good faith rather than providing the constant misinformation we see from the other side.

Related:

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation receives over $1 billion a year from taxpayers. I don’t believe we’re getting value for money. It is just being used as a platform for the left to tear down conservatives.

Let me know what you thought of the fact that they covered negative conservative news over 130 times compared to just 20 when it was about the left.

Click Here for Transcript | Part 1

Senator Roberts: I’d like to [inaudible] for a third set of questions that I have, so I’ll do that now rather than wait for it. Thank you for appearing here today. You’re dealing with accusations and a perception of bias from substantial parts of the community. I know you strongly deny any bias and say that the ABC is impartial.  One of the claims of bias is that ABC gives leniency to what is commonly termed left-leaning politicians—which, to me, is the control side of politics—and is more critical of conservative politicians. You’d obviously be aware that even Media Watch slammed the ABC’s coverage of an incident involving Senator Thorpe outside of a strip club, calling the ABC’s lack of coverage ‘pathetic’. Are you aware of Media Watch’s own criticism?

Mr Anderson: Yes.

Senator Roberts: I’d like to compare that to some of your other coverage. When there was a story critical of the New South Wales One Nation leader, Mark Latham, over a tweet, ABC mentioned the story 131 times, yet you only mentioned the Senator Thorpe incident 21 times. Just for comparison, the Nine Network covered the same incidents, mentioning Mark Latham’s incident 80 and Senator Thorpe’s incident 90 times. That’s fairly balanced. Here we have a conservative politician and a politician on the left who were, I would argue, involved in incidents of similar significance, yet you’ve mentioned the negative story about the conservative 131 times and the story of the left-leaning politician only 21 times. How can you maintain that there is no bias in the ABC in the face of those statistics?

Mr Anderson: Firstly, I’d say that, in the complaints we receive and in the way they’re investigated, I don’t see evidence of systemic bias, which is what is levelled at us on a regular basis. I’ll defer to Mr Stevens when it comes to the coverage particularly about Lidia Thorpe and that incident.

Mr Stevens: Thanks for the question. I respectfully disagree; we are not biased. We take an impartial approach to any and all stories. But the bar is also high around the outsourcing of journalism and the accuracy of it. On that particular story which you’ve identified, regarding Senator Thorpe—and I note that Senator Thorpe is no longer in the committee room—the ABC did cover it, for starters. Secondly, the vision you refer to was not the ABC’s. Channel 7 had in possession the raw footage of Senator Thorpe, not the ABC. I back the editorial judgement of my editorial leaders to be very careful about not using video that we haven’t sourced ourselves, and we don’t know what comes before and after it, and not rush to report it.  The emphasis on rushing to reporting it is because we did report on it during the course of the week. Afternoon Briefing covered it on the Monday after, and on the Wednesday, when the Prime Minister made additional comments. When it went from being something that happened in the private sphere, outside of parliament, outside of the Senator’s time in Canberra, when the Prime Minister elevated it to the discussion being relevant to Canberra, we did cover it. 

If there is some implication from the question, and I might be mistaken, that we are not covering Senator Thorpe as forensically as we would others, I’d respectfully point out to Senator Roberts that it was the ABC which broke the story about Senator Thorpe, in October last year, regarding the questions around whether she had a conflict of interest by sitting on a particular committee. It was that story, broken by the ABC, which was referred to the privileges committee. I understand the privileges committee reported back in March, and the committee found that Senator Thorpe did not disclose any sensitive information to Dean Martin, for the record, and we reported that at the time. But it was the ABC that broke that story, in October, which should demonstrate that we do not shy away from investigative journalism regarding any politician of any political affiliation.

Senator Henderson: Chair, I’m sorry to interrupt. In light of these discussions, Senator Thorpe was previously here and I wonder whether someone should alert her to these discussions. She may or may not know, but, out of fairness, could someone let her know this discussion is taking place?

Senator Roberts: This is not about Senator Thorpe, it’s about the way the ABC treats her compared to others. Are we going to invite Mark Latham?

Senator Henderson: There are certain discussions being—I think, to be fair, we need to give her that opportunity, to let her know that this discussion is taking place.

Chair: Thank you, Senator Henderson. Senator Roberts, would you like to continue?

Senator Roberts: This is what Paul Barry from Media Watch said: ‘But it was a proper news story and the ABC should have covered it from the start.’ You said when the Prime Minister got involved it increased the importance of it. So you wouldn’t have covered it if the Prime Minister hadn’t got involved?

Mr Stevens: We covered it before the Prime Minister said anything.

Senator Roberts: In a very subdued way compared to what you did with Mark Latham.

Mr Stevens: I don’t have to hand our coverage of Mark Latham, and the fact that he’s in New South Wales politics these days I’m not sure what the New South Wales newsroom did with that. I’m happy to follow up and look at that.

Senator Roberts: If you live in a bubble, you won’t see what people in Australia are seeing. With topics like climate change the ABC is considered heavily biased. It doesn’t present the data. It doesn’t present the evidence. It just presents opinion. So let’s move on.

Mr Stevens: Sorry, just on that, I would respectfully disagree when it comes to that. We follow the weight of evidence when it comes to our coverage on climate and the weight of scientific evidence that sits with it.

Senator Roberts: Perhaps you could take on notice—

Mr Stevens: I can take it on notice and respond to you.

Senator Roberts: Take it on notice to provide me with the sources of your climate change evidence that—

Mr Stevens: Can you provide some examples, please, as to where we have not done fact-based reporting on climate change?

Senator Roberts: Sure.

Mr Stevens: Right now?

Senator Roberts: I can’t do it right now because I don’t have the data.

Chair: Thank you, Mr Stevens; that can be provided to you later.

Senator Roberts: Let’s go back to last Senate estimates. I asked the ABC about the presence of Bruce Pascoe and Dark Emu related material on the ABC education site and why it was there. We had a conversation about the fact that many of his claims about Indigenous history are highly contested, and some of them have been completely debunked. You answered me then that whatever was on the ABC website would be reflecting the national curriculum.  After you told me that, I asked the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority in a subsequent Senate estimates session: ‘What’s in the curriculum about this topic?’ I have to say that ACARA were pretty shocked, to put it mildly, that you had claimed that material was in the curriculum. Specifically, which part of the national curriculum are you claiming that material of Bruce Pascoe’s reflects? Keep in mind that I’m going to be asking ACARA about this too in a few days.

Mr Anderson: I will have to get back to you on notice with regard to that. Did we give you a response to that on notice after my appearance at estimates last time?

Senator Roberts: No.

Mr Anderson: We didn’t? We will as to why, and I apologise if that was the case. My knowledge of what we do for ABC education, the resources sit there. There are state and territory curriculums as well as what we have nationally and we do put assets there that do align to it. That said, I’ll respond to what you’ve just put to me on notice.

Senator Roberts: Can you please take it on notice, as you just agreed, to provide the specific part of the ACARA curriculum you claim to be reflecting.

Mr Anderson: Yes.

Click Here for Transcript | Part 2

Senator Roberts: Before I start my questions, I have an apology. I made an error, Mr Anderson. You did in fact reply to my question on notice last time about the curriculum, but you didn’t state specifically from where you got it in the curriculum. You’ve undertaken to come back with that this time.

Mr Anderson: I have, and I still will.

Senator Roberts: I tabled a screenshot of a tweet from the ABC Media Watch Twitter account. It was in response to a tweet I made about—

Chair: Sorry, just to clarify: that wasn’t tabled; it was circulated—just to be clear.

Senator Roberts: Thank you. It was made about a protest in front of Parliament House, the Let Women Speak movement. Do you know what happened to that tweet and why it was removed?

Mr Anderson: No, I do not.

Senator Roberts: It was deleted about a second after that screenshot was taken. Do you have any information on why it was deleted?

Mr Anderson: No, I don’t.

Senator Roberts: Could we have that information?

Mr Anderson: I will investigate and respond.

Senator Roberts: Do you keep logs of tweets and deleted tweets?

Mr Anderson: We don’t monitor people’s personal use of social media, because we don’t take legal or editorial responsibility for it. That was a change we made some time ago, which I’ve canvassed heavily here. No, we don’t keep a log of it. There are certainly records when things are raised to our attention, we investigate and disciplinary action is taken—yes, that is recorded.

Senator Roberts: This is not a personal account. It looks like it’s the media watch account, @ABCmediawatch.

Mr Anderson: Which, as an official ABC account, I will investigate.

Senator Roberts: Thank you. I’m concerned that the ABC is sending tweets which could be considered antagonistic to a sitting Senator and then deleting them like nothing happened. That doesn’t bode well for accountability. If that screenshot weren’t taken and I couldn’t table it, people would rightly question me for trying to talk about this with you now. Social media seems to be a real, ongoing problem for the ABC, not just from your journalists but even from your official accounts. What are you going to do to get this under control?

Mr Anderson: Again, the vast majority of staff do the right thing. We have been getting it under control. People have been disciplined for this. For those people who have gone against the code and been found to be in breach, they have had disciplinary action against them. We’re now up to individuals that have been terminated from the ABC as a result of their personal use of social media. That is personal use of social media.  This appears to be an official ABC social media account, subject to our ABC social media policy with regard to that. If it is, we do take editorial responsibility for it—for which we have very few problems, I will say. I will investigate it and come back to you.

Senator Roberts: It’s just that it’s been raised quite a bit on social media. Moving onto another issue: there have been reports that the ABC has never received more complaints about a show than you did for the King’s coronation coverage. Can you confirm that?

Mr Anderson: That is incorrect. We have received more complaints than that in the past. I wouldn’t hasten to give examples because they’re sometimes not great moments in ABC history as they go back some way. In recent times, it is one of the larger amount of complaints, yes.

Senator Roberts: What is the total number of complaints that you received on that?

Mr Anderson: I believe it’s around 1,800 at the moment, of which, I gave evidence earlier to say approximately 60 are editorial complaints being investigated by the ombudsman, some complaints are categorised in a different way and some of it is outright racism.

Senator Roberts: While I didn’t watch the coronation, I’m wondering why Australians who are interested in the coronation, interested in the pomp and ceremony—if that’s what they want—interested in who’s arriving and all of the proceedings et cetera—what a show it is—and who turned on the ABC to watch the coronation found, inserted into that live coverage, commentaries about Indigenous rights and the proposal for a Voice to parliament for Indigenous people. What was the aim and the thought process in structuring your coverage like that?

Mr Anderson: I’ll defer to Mr Stevens for his response.

Mr Stevens: I note you said that you didn’t see the coverage, so I’m happy to give you a bit more information about what it did cover. It was eight hours of coverage over the course of the evening, from 4 pm onwards. The official ceremony itself started at 8 pm Sydney time. We had four hours of coverage leading into the ceremony proper starting. We used the BBC commentary for the actual formal proceedings of the event itself from 8 pm onwards. That was a concerted decision because we knew that the BBC would have access to information that we weren’t privy to around the order of proceedings and the extra, additional historical details behind the order of proceedings. We obviously had a broad picture of what would happen, however not the level of detail that they had. Obviously, they’ve got knowledge of individuals in the abbey that we didn’t have. For the course of the four hours leading into it commencing, we, from time to time, showed vision of what was unfolding in the lead up.  Three to four hours out, can you believe, people were being led into the abbey, in terms of guests. We were showing that visually, and there was music as well. The presenters did a really good job of trying to navigate saying what was unfolding with that vision. That’s a key tenet of good TV—to say what is happening, but then to return to the discussions that we wanted to have three to four hours out of the ceremony starting.

Senator Roberts: I understand what you’re saying, and I thank you for the explanation. It makes perfect sense, and what you’re saying about making good TV makes perfect sense. But still some of the chatter around the presentation was dealing with things like Indigenous rights and the Voice proposal to parliament et cetera. Is that appropriate?

Mr Stevens: For a portion of the coverage, for about 40 minutes, we had a really important discussion about our history. We aired First Nations perspectives of that and colonisation; and their view and experience of the Crown in their lives. That was 40 minutes of eight hours of coverage. Actually, a really important part and remit of the ABC, as you know, is to have discussions which are in the national interest, that reflect on history, that are factually based on history. It’s very important in our coverage of the news and major events that, over the course of that coverage, we have a diversity of perspectives. That was a 40-minute discussion for which there has been a lot of attention; however, we had a multitude of guests over the eight hours and people speaking to the events itself.

Senator Roberts: Do you still think your coverage was impartial, that way?

Mr Stevens: Absolutely.

Senator Roberts: Okay. Before we finish, what was my commitment to you? To get you an understanding of why you’re biased on climate change, for example—is that what I undertook to do?

Mr Stevens: You did. You undertook to provide evidence of non fact-based reporting of climate change.

Senator Roberts: Sure. Thank you very much.